The Ultimate Pantry & Freezer Meal…Zuppa di Ravioli

There are times when a good pantry, refrigerator, and freezer clean out are needed. Digging all the way to the back of the pantry or freezer will at times turn up items that you can’t even remember buying, but as long as they aren’t freezer burned or out of date/stale, you owe it to your wallet to find a way to use them. Sometimes, I think that’s when I get the most creative.

With 2 kids, who, at times, will complain about everything put in front of them, I need to use ingredients that they are guaranteed to like, while sneaking in healthy stuff like spinach, squash, peppers, celery. While I don’t advocate lying to your children, bending the truth and playing dumb are perfectly acceptable. If Ean thinks for one minute that a dish MIGHT have squash or zucchini, he’ll refuse to eat or he’ll spend an hour sifting through to remove any trace of the rogue vegetables. My solution, cut them up so minutely tiny that he never knows they are there. Does it work? ABSOLUTELY! You have no idea how many times I’ve slipped zucchini, carrots, and the dreaded spinach into spaghetti sauce. It’s hard to chop fresh spinach, so I just tell him it’s an herb. He believes it with no further questioning. Oh, and shoot the kids some creative name for a dish and they’ll eat it every time. My mother always got my brother to eat baked beans by adding hot dogs cut lengthwise baked on top and calling them “dinosaur bones.” He fell for it every time, and probably still makes them…at 38 years old!